Really top notch review as usual!
One thing that got me curious is this observation:
Using Dirac Live in my home theater resulted in poorer performance. I ran DL full range which corrected response from 20Hz to 20kHz. I believe, in the case of these speakers, it is best if DL is kept to a minimal passband (below Schroeder frequency).
I’d be interested to hear any thoughts you or others here have about why DL room correction seems to hurt performance here.
I get that you generally want a speaker with well controlled directivity and impeccable on and off axis frequency response, leaving room correction for below Schroeder frequency.
And that correcting above Schroeder can make things worse because it can’t fix directivity problems, making one axis flat but another worse.
But, F226Be seems to have excellent directivity control and is already pretty much within +-1.5 dB of flat. So I’m struggling to understand how room correction correction could make things worse. For one, it wouldn‘t have to do much since the curve is already pretty flat, unless the target curve is different. Then it would be a matter of adjusting the target curve to match, revealing it’s just a house curve preference issue? Or could it be something else?